


Grandpa's House

by IneffableFangirl_writes



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Grandpa Walter Skinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableFangirl_writes/pseuds/IneffableFangirl_writes
Summary: A little AU where Skinner retires at a reasonable age and Mulder and Scully use him as their childcare provider because Grandpa!Skinner.Taken from the backlog of fic on my computer, presented by quarantine.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Grandpa's House

“Grampa?” a little girl with bright red curls tugged on Assistant Director (Retired) Skinner’s pant leg.  
“Yes Maggie?”  
“When’s William getting home?”  
“Not until three-thirty, sweetie.”  
The child slumped her shoulders and stuck out her lower lip in a perfect pout.  
“I want him to come home now.”  
“I know,” Skinner sighed and scooped up Margaret Melissa Scully, balancing the four-year old on a hip. “How about you and me do something until he gets home, okay?”  
“Wanna play house?”  
Sighing inwardly (‘house’ was her favorite game and after the hundredth time it got a bit old, no matter how much he loved her) Skinner nodded.  
“All right.”  
“I’ll be the mommy,” Maggie announced. “You can be the baby.”  
“How about the dog?” Skinner suggested as he set her down.  
Wrinkling her brow for a moment, she thought.  
“Umm….no. You can be the baby.”  
Worth a try, Skinner thought to himself and he sunk onto the couch.  
“Okay, what are we going to do today, mommy?”  
“I gotta go to work,” Maggie said and she ran to pull on her shiny black Mary Janes.  
“What do you do at work?”  
“I save the world,” Maggie said simply, struggling with the snap on her shoe for a moment before getting it.  
“And what does Daddy do?”  
“Helps Mommy.”  
“And what does the baby do?”  
“Stays home with Grampa.”  
Lying back on the couch, he nodded.  
“Okay, so while I stay with grandpa, you have a good day at work, okay?”  
“Bye baby,” Maggie pressed a kiss to his stubbly cheek. “You be good for grampa, okay?”  
“I will,” Skinner replied, beginning to relax a bit. Maggie’s games of ‘house’ varied from the more traditional ones played by a friend or two her own age involving making dinner and taking care of the baby to one more closely resembling the life she knew--where Mommy and Daddy went to work and she stayed with Grandpa Skinner, a nickname he had tried to shake off when Mulder gleefully taught it to William. William had stuck with the title and Maggie followed suit, leaving him to be impromptu grandfather and nanny to Mulder and Scully’s two children.  
As Maggie scampered off to other parts of the house, he lay on the couch and contemplated his life post-FBI. Many things had changed and many had not.  
“This patient has a boo-boo,” he heard Maggie’s voice carry from the bedroom she and William shared on overnight stays when Mulder and Scully were working late or when they wanted a weekend to themselves. Smiling, he turned on the TV and checked his watch. It was just after one and with a little luck Maggie would keep herself entertained until William got home to rehash the wonders of the second grade.  
While she played, he kept an ear out as he usually did; FBI training was an oddly appropriate skill set he could use in child-supervision. She switched back and forth between being a doctor and pounding up and down the upstairs hallway half-bellowing ‘we gotta get the aliems, Muwder!’ He resisted chuckling and wondered if he had told her one too many dramatized versions of her parents’ adventures under his command.  
With her happily occupied, he watched an afternoon soap with half his attention and then rose from the couch and headed in the direction of the kitchen. Preheating the oven, he pulled ingredients from his pantry. On the door hung a flower-print apron that looked like it might belong to a woman twice his age--a gift from William, along with matching oven mitts. As his retired-clothes were an old t-shirt and jeans, he forgoed the apron. Adding ingredients to the bowl, he stirred and kept an ear out to the younger Mulder child romping about. He caught a few phrases here and there about boo-boos and aliems and bad guys and smiled before flipping on the electric mixer.  
Like a cat with a can opener, Maggie seemed drawn by the sound and was hovering next to him within twenty or thirty seconds.  
“You making cookies, grampa?”  
“That depends,” Skinner replied, scraping the edge of the bowl with a spatula. “Did you pick up all your toys?”  
“Uh huh.”  
“Really now? So if I go up there, all the toys will be cleaned up and put away?”  
Maggie vanished as quickly as she had appeared and he heard the telltale thud of the toy box lid against the wall before the accompanying noises of the clatter of toys and probably the old, dead cell phone she pretended was real. More shuffling, probably her putting away her dress-up clothes in the bin that sat on the floor of the closet. He scraped and added vanilla to the batter.  
When she reappeared, Maggie looked expectant.  
“Can I help stir?”  
“No, but you can go get the chocolate chips.”  
To the pantry and back, she already had the bag open and was putting several semi sweet morsels in her mouth.  
“Save some for the cookies, cookie monster.”  
She grinned at him, gooey brown and smelling of chocolate.  
“Do you want to pour them in?”  
She did.

By the time William got home there were cookies cooling on the counter and Maggie was happily watching one of the many Disney princess movies that he kept on a low shelf by the TV. She could operate the VCR by herself, even if no one else used the damn thing. She even knew how to rewind her own tapes, chanting as they whirred ‘be kind, rewind’ which he could have sworn he only mentioned to her once.  
“Grandpa!” William bellowed and Maggie turned to shush him, engrossed in The Little Mermaid.  
“We’re subtracting three-digit numbers today...are those cookies?”  
“Only after you have something healthy to eat.”  
“Kay. Can I have chips?”  
“Not if you want cookies.”  
“Apple?”  
“If you get me one, I’ll cut it up for you.”  
“No thanks, I can eat it round.”  
Snatching an apple from the basket on the table, he settled on the floor next to his sister, who was mouthing the words to ‘Under the Sea.’  
“Hi,” she said once the song was over. “Y’have a good day?”  
“Uh huh. Were you good?”  
“Uh huh.”  
By the time Mulder and Scully got there, the kids were playing Hungry Hungry Hippos on the living room floor while Skinner made dinner.  
“Mommy!” Maggie shrieked, and leapt up to hug her mother, then father as William smiled at them, for the moment too old to make such a spectacle.  
“We’re doing three digit subtracting now,” he said casually, with the air of someone announcing something that they knew was impressive.  
“Wow, I’m not sure your dad can do that!” Scully smiled at her son while her husband looked over, protesting,  
“Hey!”  
Wednesdays meant dinner with Grandpa and while Scully hugged her former boss and thanked him for his daily care of her children, he just nodded and shooed the kids to wash their hands.  
Retirement had its perks.


End file.
